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Friday, May 14, 2010

Mathematics and English/language arts are the first subjects being addressed by the Common Core State Standards Initiative, but they won't be the last.

Commissioner Holliday told a legislative committee today that a first draft of shared science standards may be available this summer from the National Research Council, though a final draft is many further steps away.

He expects social studies standards will be developed, but that will be harder because of the national diversity of political opinions that have to fit together. To underline the variety, he pointed out that there are people in South Carolina who still argue that the South won the Civil War.

On May 11 and 12, the State Education Agency Directors of Arts Education (SEADEA) held a meeting of the National Arts Education Task Force to discuss the creation of common core standards in the arts. The meeting took place at the offices of the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) in Washington, DC.

[snip]

The group discussed what has changed in arts education since the national standards were released in 1994 and began developing an action plan to support the inclusion of the arts in the creation of the common core standards.

For Kentucky, the one problem with this work is that it's slower than we need. Senate Bill 1 calls for all our standards to be in place by this December, but the work with other states just is not moving at that pace. Senator Winters today described efforts he's made and urged others to keep pushing for other states to accelerate the shared effort. Yes, it's worth it to stick with the common effort, but it's also right for Kentucky to push for the common effort to work at maximum speed.